Gendered right to the city: mobility and infrastructure in Hyderabad, India
Abstract:
<p>Studying women's use of urban transportation infrastrucutres in Global Southern cities gives rise to a complex understanding of their gendered right to the city. I use 'gendered right to the city' as a theoretical perspective that enables us to better understand the everyday, lived realities of women in Hyderabad, India. Using existing literature in critical infrastructure studies, mobilities, and feminist post-colonial geographies, I adapt the gendered right to the city perspective to conceptualize a study on women's work commutes to and from the Information Technology hub of Cyberabad. This focuses on the bodies at the core of state developmental imaginaries, techie-women, the colloquial term for women working in Information Technology, who are often the object of urban narratives and policies of progress, but rarely subjects of their own voice and making.This perspective, I argue allows for understanding the lives of women who are constantly living the duality of global aspirations and local reality. This priliminary theoretical work is based on intensive literature review of scholarship in geogrpahy. </p>
Keywords: Gendered right to the city, urban mobility, everyday, post-colonial city
Authors:
Aila Bandagi Kandlakunta, University of Nevada, Reno; Submitting Author / Primary Presenter